


The Last Time We Fought

by lousy_science



Series: The Mutineers [1]
Category: Marvel, Wolverine and the X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Enemies to Lovers, Fist Fights, M/M, Not Beta Read, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-23 01:48:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13179813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lousy_science/pseuds/lousy_science
Summary: Logan works as a detective out of a small bar in California, a long way from Westchester and with no intention of going back to work for Charles Xavier and his private militia. Then he gets a call asking him to do one more job: find Scott Summers.





	The Last Time We Fought

_San Jose, California_

Logan has a reputation for being a man who can find things, and that reputation is all he needs in the business he’s in. He doesn’t have a Private Investigator’s license; P.I.s are the kind of guys you hire to spy on your spouse to prevent you from paying alimony. That’s not what he does. You can’t claim Logan’s work as a business expense, and he doesn’t have a website, a marketing plan, or any business cards. There’s no office he works out of. Instead he has Guillermo’s Bar, where interested persons can find him from around 4 o’clock most days. There’s a seat that he favors, and on the rare occasions that someone else decides to take it Logan can usually dispatch them quickly enough. It’s the kind of bar where no one asks him to stop smoking, and while the beer is generally terrible and the whiskey worse, they do the job Logan needs them to do. 

If any other patrons have an issue with Logan’s use of Guillermo’s, they could always take it up with the owner. Unfortunately for them, Logan is the owner, and his customer service approach would probably leave them bleeding. 

The bar was in an area of town which was just about resisting gentrification. It was on a street next to a couple of Vietnamese grocery stores and a place where you could buy an iPhone which had fallen off the back of a truck. But Silicon Valley didn’t sustain places like this, and if Logan hadn’t bought it, he figured in a year or two it’d be an espresso bar with a tattoo parlour on the side, and there’d be no place left for the old guys playing cards, for the stray dogs who wandered in to sleep under the tables, or for him. 

He’d used some of the money he had lying around after a job for an aeronautics agency. It was one of the last things he’d done with Xavier’s crew, and he suspected Charles knew it would be, which was why his payout was so large. 

It wasn’t the terrible pay that made Logan leave the military, but he had found private work tended to be far more lucrative. Lucrative enough for him to build up a little nest egg, enough that he could walk away from any mission. Whether it was private contract jobs or special ops work for the government, Logan was never paid to be a nice guy. In time, that weighed on him. Of all the outfits he’d worked for, Charles had the only organization that he’d maintained a shred of respect for, but he’d still needed to leave before he couldn’t face himself in the mirror anymore.

Hell, he never wanted to be in a team at all. No matter what Charles said. Working for himself was going just fine. 

“Chief,” Jeff at the bar called over to him. Logan turned around to see the bar phone in his hand. 

“Call for you.”

Grunting acknowledgement, Logan got up to take the cordless phone off him and settled back in his chair. He owned about six active mobile phones, but unless he was on a case, he kept them all turned off, stored between his apartment, car, and a couple of storage lockers scattered through the city. No point in walking around with a homing device on you. And Logan could afford to be picky about what jobs he chose.

He said, “Logan,” and waited for the person on the other end to explain themselves. 

“Logan! It’s wonderful to hear your voice,”

“Charles,” he started, sitting up a little straighter, casting his eyes around the room. Whenever he heard from Xavier, an ambush wasn’t usually far off. Just a side effect of being the head of a specialised global militia. 

“What is it?”

On the other end of the line, Charles laughed. That could mean nothing, or it could mean armageddon was imminent if Logan didn’t break the neck of an East Asian dictator in the next three days. It was hard to tell. “Ah, Logan, I wish I could be there in person. Or you could be here in Westchester - you’d be fascinated by the new training facilities we’ve installed.”

Logan could bet he would not be, but he stayed on the line. Charles continued prattling on, then said “But I know I’d need a better reason to drag you up here. However, I need some help.”

“What kind?”

He expected Charles to say something cryptic, to insist on communicating over a more secure platform, or even to roll in the front door of the bar - for an expert in espionage and handling internationally volatile secrets, the man loved a little theatre. Instead he said it outright. 

“It’s Scott. He’s gone missing.”

 

_Douglas County, Nebraska_

Logan turned the car past Boy’s Town and wondered how many of the residents still knew the movie that had made the area famous, once, back when people saw Catholic Priests looking after orphans as something wholesome. These days no one even used the word orphan. Scott Summer’s juvenile record had mostly avoided it. It was assembled from the hurried and disinterested reports of teachers and social workers (“erratic”, “disruptive”, “acting out”, “unsettled”). There were terse descriptions of the fights he got into at school - fights that he usually won, despite being a scrawny kid with crippling migraines. Logan knew that Scott had always overworked for every ounce of muscle on his frame, and that came after he grew into his height. 

Scott had been in foster care his entire teens, sometimes with his brother, often not. The Summers boys didn’t play nice, the social workers reported, with words that dripped with fatigue. It had made Logan laugh. He’d fought with both Alex and Scott, and could read the roots of what made both of them gigantic pains in the ass in the files. Alex had “anger management issues”, that sure hadn’t changed when Logan last ran into the little snot. 

But Scott had control, focus, a strategist’s mind. It made him a much more satisfying opponent. Not that the child psychologist who assessed him at fourteen had seen that. She’d just written that Scott was “defensive and insular...unable to articulate his feelings about his parent’s death...brooding, doesn’t forgive easily...a ticking time bomb of frustration.”

Reading all this, Logan had hoped Scott had given them all hell. _Ticking time bomb_ , what a shitty way to talk about a kid who had less than nothing. Both parents dead, older brother in juvie, headaches that felt like he was being murdered, and he’d ended up in a state home in Omaha stuck on a couch with some shrink who had approximately diddly squat to offer him. 

Driving past meat processing plants, Logan imagined the kid who’d worked overtime in one of them to buy his first motorbike to get the hell out of Dodge. But for one reason or another, he’d not made it any farther than the nearest recruitment office. Scott’s dad had been Airforce, but Scott wouldn’t be allowed to fly with the migraines, so he’d ended up in the Army. 

That was how the two of them first met. Fifteen years ago, on a training op, and Sergeant Summers had pissed Logan off from the get-go. They’d argued over every point on the mission plan, they’d argued during the mission, and they had argued afterwards to the point where their commanding officer had threatened both of them with disciplinary action. 

Which led to their first real fight, outside an army bar in Kansas, on a muggy night which stank of sweat and cows. 

Of course Logan had won. But Scott had surprised him, got in some good hits, and shown the sheer depths of his cussedness. The kid just never gave up, until Logan had him pinned in a headlock and almost choked him blue. Three guys intervened and pulled them apart, and to Scott’s credit he never thanked them. He just hauled off to the edge of the parking lot and threw his guts up. 

Whatever the name of that base was, Logan had long since forgotten it. Another no-name town, like the ones Scott grew up in and never seemed to be able to shake. Logan’s GPS was pointed to Everton, a town which boasted two pet food plants, one of the nation’s highest rates of subprime mortgages, and an award-winning high school marching band. 

He didn’t think Scott had much interest in marching bands. But Everton had been the home of Rosalie Saxon, the only foster parent Scott had ever liked. He’d told Charles that she had been the first adult who took his migraines seriously, and put up blackout curtains in his bedroom so he could be in total darkness when they took hold. Her brother had been a gearhead, and let Scott tinker in his garage. As far as Scott’s teen years went, his time with Rosalie had been the best. 

It hadn’t lasted. She went from being diagnosed with ovarian cancer to dying in three months. Scott had been sent back to the state home, where they didn’t give out painkillers even if you had chronic pain issues. He’d broken out of there three times, and every time he’d headed back to Everton. 

Logan drove the car through the town’s streets, from the strip malls at either end, over the tracks to the no man’s land of industrial space on the east side, then crossing back into weather-beaten suburbia and the signs of the two main religions in town, a shiny-domed evangelical church with a giant carpark, and the high school’s football stadium. To Logan it looked newly-built and oversized for the town it was in, but then Logan had never been much of a football fan. Judging by the amount of signs he saw boosting the Everton Jaguars, he might be the only non-believer in a ten-mile radius. Pulling into the street leading to the school, he wondered if the marching band had the same level of popularity, given that they were the only ones winning anything. 

There was a wide green track field on the edge of the school, and that’s where Logan saw him first. It was 6pm, and the slate grey sky was beginning to darken. No one else was on the field but for the runner moving around the track at a ferocious pace. He was wearing the same US Army hoodie and sweats that Logan used to see him wear in Westchester. 

Scott was built to run, all long lines, and possessed with the single-mindedness that made him an excellent student, leader, and total pain in Logan’s ass. He was the kind of guy who did ultramarathons for fun, insomuch that he had any concept of fun. Even from a distance, Logan could make out the hard lines on his face. Scott didn’t run for the endorphins. He ran so he could be the fastest, the steadiest, the one who would never give up. 

As he swept around a bend to make another lap, Logan eyed up the vintage Dodge Challenger parked along the curb. He’d never seen it on the road before. It had been broken-down boneshaker when Scott had it hauled into the garages at Westchester. Charles, who never understood why someone would buy something that wasn’t brand new, unless it was an impeccable antique, was bemused, but Logan had seen what Scott had seen - the beautiful build of her frame, the strength of chassis, how cherry she would look with a new paint job. Scott had still been restoring it almost from scratch when Logan had last seen it, and seeing it completed brought home just how much time had passed since they’d been together in Westchester. 

Scott had painted her in a deep ruby red. This wasn’t a car you drove when you wanted to be invisible. It was a car you drove when you wanted to get the hell away from something, on your own terms, even if you didn’t know where you were going. 

Watching through the windscreen, he saw that Scott had begun to slow down, and at the farthest corner of the field he turned sharply to cross across the track in the direction of the Challenger. Logan turned the steering wheel to take him up a road stretching away from the school, keeping an eye on the car in his rearview. Scott hung on to the roof as he stretched out his quads. Parking behind a pick-up opposite the first residential house on the street, Logan looked in his side mirrors as the Challenger peeled out of the school lot, heading north. 

He waited thirty seconds before following. The car was fast, but it would be hardly difficult to find again. 

Back on the main roads, Scott headed in the opposite direction from where Logan had driven in. Just out of town, beyond a cluster of outlet stores promising discount perfume and shoes were a couple of motels, serving Everton’s visitors and adulterers. 

The Challenger was parked outside one called The View, which had been careful not to specify what kind of view you received. Killing the engine, Logan sat in his car and watched the lights go on in Scott’s room. He’d still be moving quickly, even when he was exhausted by the run, grabbing a towel for the shower, unlacing his sneakers, gasping down one of those blue or yellow energy drinks that he swore by. 

The last time he and Scott had fought had been in the woods near Westchester, two years ago. There was a clearing where kids used to go to party, drink beers and ride dirt bikes around, with a couple of rotting mattresses thrown under the trees. The forest had smelled of recent rain, and the sky was still greying and troubled above them. 

They were out there to escape Charles, who had insisted that their conflict had been resolved once the last mission was finished. So what if Scott had given an order Logan hadn’t agreed with, and Logan had turned his comms off and done what he thought was right instead. At the end of it, as far as Charles was concerned, the mission was a success and they needed to move on. 

The one thing they had both agreed on was that Charles was wrong. The situation was untenable, and when Scott offered a time and place to resolve it, Logan showed up. He was no stranger to beating Scott’s ass, but at least this time he didn’t have to deal with an audience. 

He and Scott paced the edge of the clearing, eyes on each other. They had done this enough times to know each other’s bodies, and after the last mission Logan could count off the current injuries Scott was nursing; he hitched his right shoulder as it had taken a direct hit from a lead pipe swung by a Ukrainian sex trafficker, and he still had a broken rib on his left side from the impact of a fall he’d taken from a moving truck outside Lviv. 

Similarly, he knew Scott noticed the torn skin on his fists, the bad knee he favored, and the torn muscle in his back which restricted some of his range. Scott would be going for all those spots, probably with one of his viciously effective hook kicks.

 

Logan’s best strategy would be to fight close, out of kicking range, forcing Scott to hand-to-hand combat where he was less powerful than Logan. He spat on the ground, enjoying Scott’s eyes narrowing in disgust, and advanced on him. 

The first punch hurt both of them. Scott reduced the impact by turning towards it and cross-kicking, getting a follow-up hit to Logan’s battered knuckles.

Locking arms in a cross-grip, he attempted to toss Scott to the ground, but got a kick in the kidneys instead. The tenacious fucker held on despite Logan’s granite grip, getting close enough to headbutt him hard under the jaw, a surprise crack that pushed Logan off-center for a split-second. Long enough for Scott to go for his knee and knock Logan down. 

He took Scott with him, dragging him into a wrestling pin where he could get his legs immobile and give a nasty pull on that bad shoulder. Scott shouted out, before headbutting Logan again, this time getting him in the nose. That was followed by a sharp elbow to the face, which Logan returned. 

They scuffled like that on the forest floor, matching hurt for hurt, leaving no tender spot untouched. Logan scratched at Scott’s face, Scott kneed him between the legs, and they cursed each other out as they regrouped on their hands and knees. Scott got to his feet first and moved to kick Logan in the neck. Intercepting the strike, Logan pulled him flat to the ground while punching him in the hip, a hit which didn’t even make sense but felt good to land. 

Crawling together, an eight-limbed monster, they tumbled over a stack of leftover beer cans and into an abandoned fire pit. There, in the ashes, their hands around each other’s necks, Logan got Scott directly under him and slammed him back into the ground over and over. His heartbeat was throbbing in his ears and he knew he was shouting but couldn’t hear himself, intent on nothing more than the resistance to his grip. 

That Scott would never give up - that they could paralyse one another, disfigure themselves, even leave one person dead - was suddenly more real to him than it ever had been before. Releasing his hold, he twisted out of Scott’s hands and in a cloud of ash and dirt raised himself to his feet. He held a hand out to Scott, not to help him up, but to indicate that they’d fight standing up, fight with fists now. 

Scott looked back at him, and grunted, getting up to face Logan in a traditional martial arts start pose. They ran through some basic set-ups for a while, Scott flipping Logan to his back, Logan picking him up and tossing him to the ground. The fight was slower now, less intense, and neither of them were returning to their feet as quickly. 

Rubbing at the grit in his eyes, Logan stood to face Scott again. He noticed that Scott’s legs were shaking with small tremors of exhaustion. He thought his own bad knee was about to buckle. They traded punches for a while, before leaning into a grip, shoulder-to-shoulder, head rested on the other’s neck, Logan going to hit Scott’s back but found himself just holding on to it, while Scott had two handfuls of Logan’s trap muscles and was doing a bad job of trying to tear them off his body. 

After exhaling, Logan tipped his head up. Looking at Scott, caked in mud and blood, he slowly released his hold. Scott took a step back, fists raised, crouched in a low position to keep his legs steady. The sound of their breathing filled the air. Logan could feel the cold wind on his open wounds. 

Logan nodded at Scott, lifting his hands up, tilting his head to one side. Scott took a moment, swaying slightly in his pose, before uncurling his palms. Logan watched him roll his shoulders in a slow recoil of pain, and could feel sympathy pains shooting through his own back. 

Scrubbing at the dirt in his hair, Logan said, “You look like shit.”

“Yeah, well, you look just _great_.”

Logan laughed, and his ribs screeched in pain. 

He didn’t remember how he got back to the mansion, and didn’t keep count of the pills and bottles he took to dull the pain. But he remembered the feeling of satisfaction he had seeing Charles’ face when he saw him and Scott the next morning. Charles rarely missed a chance to deliver a speech, but faced by the two of them smiling smugly with matching black eyes, fresh cuts, and bandaged hands, he was struck dumb. Eventually he told them both to take the day off (“I’m not having either of you deliver training looking like... _that_ ,”) and he and Scott took the same elevator back to the residential floors, not talking to each other, but for possibly the first time feeling genuinely comfortable with each other’s company. 

 

Logan walked up the motel stairs at a leisurely pace. He had given Scott long enough to have a shower and clean his sneakers back to a white shine, which had always been his post-run habit when he was at Westchester. The curtains were drawn across the window next to the motel room’s door, but he could see that the lights were still on and hear the burble of a TV on inside. 

Knocking twice, he leaned back on the railing over the parking lot, folding his arms. There was a peephole in the door, so right now Scott was making up his mind whether or not to open up for him or not. Logan had no intention of breaking in - that had never been part of his brief - so he just waited. 

Scott decided quickly. The door opened and he was standing in the frame, shirtless, holding a beer bottle, his hair wet from a shower, and his face screwed up, looking at Logan like he was a sack of flaming dog shit. 

Logan grinned at that. “Hiya.”

Scott rolled his eyes, muttering something like “For Chrissakes…”, and turned back inside, leaving the door open. Logan figured that was as warm of a welcome as he deserved, and walked in after him. 

Given his expectations for a motel in suburban Omaha, the room seemed particularly seedy. It was a narrow, asymmetrical shape, with grease marks on the walls and a carpet in an medieval shade of brown. A small table was laden with various bottles and cans of beer, and two Gatorades. Scott stood next to it awkwardly, swigging his beer. 

“The old man sent you?”

Logan refolded his arms, narrowed his eyes at Scott. “He just wants to know you’re alright. Not hanging from a rafter somewhere.”

Scott snorted at that. His empty bottle hit the tabletop hard. Shrugging, Logan leaned against the door jamb. “Never took you for a drinker, Summers. Thought you liked control too much.”

“Never too late to pick up a new hobby.”

“So you’re giving up ordering people around? About time.”

Scott picked up a brown bag full of bottles from the room’s single chair and slumped down into it. With the hand not carrying a week’s worth of brown liquor he flipped Logan off. “As if you ever listened to me, anyway.”

It was a weak comeback, even for Scott. Logan unfolded his arms. “Well, I can report back that former employee Scott Summers is alive, well, and doesn’t have any regards to send to the organisation he worked in for over ten years before leaving with no notice, warning, thank you note - ”

“Screw you - I don’t owe them anything, and fuck you twice for suggesting that I do. Fourteen years service. Didn’t even have a contract.”

“No contract, no Union, but full medical cover, all the tech you wanted to play with, and you were paid triple market rate.”

“So were you. And you walked out of there at least, what? Five times? I don’t remember any goodbye cards written on your best stationery. Last time, you crashed a goddamn Jeep into the garage wall just for fun before storming out. I don’t leave messes like that behind me.”

Logan smiled at the memory of the Jeep. That had been fun. “No, that’s not something a Boy Scout would do.”

Filling up a paper cup with what smelled like whiskey, Scott gave him a little toast. Logan continued, “Consider my report edited, then. Scott Summers is alive, well, and living like a king with no regrets at all.”

Peering at the booze in his cup, Scott said quietly, “Men like us always have regrets, Logan. But tell ‘em whatever you want. I don’t care.” 

Logan snorted. He doubted that. Scott Summers had many problems, but not caring enough had never been one of them. “What were you going to do tonight?” 

Scott’s face hitched up in a half smile. “They’re showing all the _Die Hards_ on cable. I’ve got a bottle of bourbon, bottle of coke, and I’m in Everton. Figured I’d relive my teen years.”

“Jack and Coke your drink? Would’ve thought you were too clean cut for anything harder than Tab.”

“Get bent, Howlett,” 

Scott straightened up to throw an empty paper cup at him. “Or get drinking. Unless you want to sit here and talk about my feelings.”

Logan hooked two fingers around the rim of the cup. “Got any ice?”

 

The TV was mounted on the wall facing the bed, so the two of them sat on top of the covers, leaning against the headboard, with the bottle of bourbon propped between them. Logan preferred his neat, so the plastic Coke bottle was under Scott’s arm, where it kept rolling over to hit the wall. It wasn’t the biggest bed, and they were both grown-ass men, so they rearranged limbs to give each other sprawling space while watching John McClane do his thing. 

Logan had taken off his jacket after unlacing his boots, and his bare arm kept brushing against Scott’s. He could think of a hundred times that he’d bent that arm behind Scott’s back, and watched the joints of his shoulder press back to try and get some leverage. 

The Coke bottle sloshed as Scott twitched, his pelvis bucking as his right leg bent up in a spasm.

“Fuck,” Scott sighed, and rubbed at his knee.

“That still a problem? Didn’t you have surgery on the ACL?”

“Yeah. I got full range of motion back but it healed tight.”

“And nothing’s as good for the knees like running for hours on it.”

Scott huffed a little laugh, gulped his drink. Logan put his down on the side table and reaches for the leg. Digging the fingers of both hands into Scott’s quads, he pushed down into the ropy muscles leading to the knee. Scott let out a moan as he found a knot. 

“See, you hold tension here,” Logan dragged a hand up, kneading the inner thigh, “I could see it when you ran, there’s a medial rotation on this side. Bet you’re rolling onto your instep, too.”

Humming with relief, Scott leaned back. “Gotta orthopedic insole thing for that. Made me feel like a middle-aged woman.”

“You’re no spring chicken. Or did you think coming back here would bring back your youth?”

“I don’t want my youth back.”

Logan keeps rubbing, easing out the tightness in the leg. He knows this body, knows its weaknesses, knows its secret strengths. He’s watched Scott for years, studied him in motion, whether it be leaning over a car engine and deftly putting it back together, or taking a new recruit through a drill for the hundredth time without showing a hint of fatigue or impatience, or running in a straight line through the manicured grass at Westchester. 

“You used to run that track a lot, back in school?”

Scott grunted in the affirmative, still wincing from the pressure of Logan’s fingers. He exhaled, and rested his temple against the headboard, his body curling over to Logan’s side of the bed. 

“Yeah. I wasn’t allowed on the track team, the coach didn’t approve of me because I wasn’t a church goer, so even though I blasted the trials he said my conduct wasn’t befitting of the school’s athletic honor code.”

“Sounds like some bullshit.” 

Logan kept kneading, feeling the tough muscle fibres begin to give way, imagining the blood rushing through, the red flush in the skin he was working, how those lean legs would look under Scott’s clothes. 

“It was, but I used to go out running after practice, work until I could beat all their best times. I used to come home, dripping with sweat, and my foster mother, Rosalie, would throw a towel at me and ask me what world record I’d broken,”

He laughed, looking down at Logan’s hands on his leg. In the background, Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson were yelling at each other. Traffic hummed along the road, people on their way out of Everton. Logan kept moving, Scott’s leg relaxed and heavy in his grip. 

Scott said, “Rosalie was the best. She had been expelled from school when she was sixteen, so she understood what kind of place Everton High was. If it hadn’t been for her parents, her Mom getting sick, she would’ve left, I think. But she stayed. Worked at a diner called Billy’s Homestyle, eventually ended up running the place.” 

He was rambling, slurring, the alcohol hitting him all at once. Apart from the remains of a sandwich wrapper balled up in the garbage, Logan hadn’t spotted any evidence of food in the room. 

One of the legs of Scott’s sweats had hitched up, and Logan could see his ankle looking a little puffy. He rested Scott’s bent leg on his own, keeping up a light pressure where his hand was resting. Scott’s head rested on Logan’s shoulder, and he could feel the warmth of his breath through the thin fabric of his t-shirt.

Logan reached over to the kit bag on the side table, looking for some tape, thinking he’d wrap up Scott’s feet to ease his tendons. Instead his fingers came across some foil packets, which he pulled out and flicked into Scott’s lap. 

“Packing condoms, Slim? You planning on getting lucky in Omaha?”

Scott laughed, his voice shrill. “I like jerking off with ‘em,”

“Oh yeah?” Logan looked down at him, still rocking with laughter, his face open under Logan’s gaze, too wasted and turned on to be embarrassed. 

“The blue ones, they’re the best. The texture, the grip...” He locked eyes with Logan. 

Logan let his left hand drop down to Scott’s crotch. That he was hard wasn’t a surprise, that he was clearly not wearing any underwear was. Logan had mentally undressed Scott enough times that he had a clear idea of what he would favor - tightie whities, bought in packets of five, like any good Midwestern boy. He squeezed back, and Scott’s hips juddered in response, Scott’s laughter a little more strangled now, his expression still goofy and open. 

Pressing his fingers around Scott he squeezed a little too hard, watched the wince and pulled his hand off, slapping Scott’s inner thigh as he did.

Wriggling next to him, Scott complained, “You asshole,” as Logan laughed. But then a hand darted over to his zipper, pushing against it for confirmation. Then Scott was the one laughing as Logan half-assedly tried to peel inquisitive fingers off himself. 

“I knew it,” Scott was saying as his hands mapped out Logan’s hardening cock, “fucking _knew_ it, you asshole,”

“If this is your idea of dirty talk then I’m not surprised you’re jerking it by yourself in Everton,”

But Scott was still laughing, and still making a poor attempt to unzip Logan’s jeans. Logan wanted a smoke. He’d had his last cigar of the day out on the open balcony of the motel while Scott went for ice. The whiskey wasn’t unwinding him, he felt his blood hot and his skin tight, and he clenched a hand around Scott’s thigh and made a decision. 

It was easy to flip Scott to his back. For once he went down easily, a sprawling mess of limbs, the crown of his head knocking on to the headboard, the bed frame groaning with their combined weight, the bottle of Coke sloshing from where it was now trapped between the mattress and the wall. Logan got his hands hooked under Scott’s arms, fingers curled around his shoulders so he could pull him down into place, his legs splayed open. Grinding his hips down into Scott’s, Logan clenched his teeth together, his jeans painfully in the way.

They both grunted as they shoved at each other, Scott’s sweats yanked down to his ankles and kicked off to land somewhere on the carpet, Logan trying to get the angles of their bodies right while Scott just wouldn’t quit moving around. Scott’s hands were everywhere on Logan, solid points of contact, but the rest of his body seemed like smoke, impossible for Logan to pin down with elbows and knees. 

He snarled, and bent down to bite Scott on the shoulder. That made him quit wiggling so much and gave Logan the relief of a hard body pressed up against his. His teeth still firm on the hot skin, he exhaled, the yearning for contact humming through his nerves. It’d been a long time since he’d had a willing body wrapped around him. 

Before Scott had stilled, he had managed to get Logan’s jeans unzipped, and now those infuriating, clever hands of his were up and under Logan’s shirt. Kneeling up, Logan ripped his own shirt off and pushed his jeans down his thighs. 

Scott was half-smiling again, breathing deeply like he’d just run a sprint, and his skin was flushed pink. He folded his hands under his head and watched Logan undress completely, rocking his hips side to side as if he dared Logan to push him down hard again. The head of his cock lolled in air, swaying from left to right - longer than Logan’s, but not as thick. 

He could lay back and smirk all he liked, but Logan could see that he wanted contact just as bad as Logan did. Lowering himself to connect their bodies again, Logan kept his eyes down, examining the red half-circle of teeth marks he’d left behind. Shoving Scott’s legs askance he huffed as their tender flesh met, cocks rubbing together in the hurried enclosure of their bodies, hands grasping at each other’s shoulders for steadiness. 

They were hitching up the bed with each thrust, until Scott head his head on the headboard again. 

“Ow!”

“What,” Logan reached a hand up to rub a palm over his scalp, “you worried about a bad hair day?”

Scott punched him in the sternum. “Just because you can’t drive this thing,”

“You want to see me fuckin’ drive?”

“I’ve seen you fucking _crash,_ ”

And that was unfair, because that had only happened on a mission once, and it was years ago. Logan could punch him back, or get up off this bed and take his dick with him, or he could lean forward and suck at Scott’s neck. A hand grabbed onto the back of his head and angled him up, and suddenly they were kissing. 

Logan kept his eyes squeezed shut. He was making sounds in the back of his throat, moaning into Scott’s mouth, his lips and chin were wet, Scott’s skin was rough with stubble but his lips were soft and Logan couldn’t stop if there was a gun to his head. 

Fingers curled through Logan’s hair, bringing their faces closer until Logan was damn near licking halfway down Scott’s throat. It still wasn’t enough. His hands couldn’t touch everywhere he wanted to, and they weren’t as close as he needed them to be. Scott had his arms and legs wrapped around Logan and they rolled to the edge of the bed until their heads almost fell off the side. 

Pulling his mouth off wetly, Logan bitched, “You couldn’t spring for a super King?”

“ _Aargh_ ,” Scott groaned, trying to force Logan onto his side. “Gimme some room, you hog.”

Logan resisted. “No fucking way.”

Crushing their mouths together again, he hauled Scott up to his knees and pushed his back against the wall. The muscle memory of moving that body around, but with more resistance, came flooding back, and he made sure to keep a hand between Scott’s skull and the wall. 

Scott, ever the quick study, wrapped his legs around Logan’s waist and got his hand down between them to line their dicks up in a firm embrace. At his touch Logan moaned and hit the wall above them. It was good, it was what the fire in his belly was seeking, but it wasn’t as much as he needed. 

Looking back over the rumpled bedspread, he could see a little blue square just within arm’s reach. Picking up the condom, he pressed it against Scott’s chest and looked at him. 

Scott wasn’t always easy for Logan to read. He was breathing hard, looking back at Logan with eyes that didn’t give anything away. Then his hand moved up to grab at the packet, and his face creased in a smile. 

Logan moved back, letting Scott get his legs back under him, and watched Scott open the condom with his teeth, slip it out of the packet, and roll it down Logan’s cock with the same swift efficiency he used for any task. 

There was a residue of slick left on his fingers, and he held Logan’s gaze as he reached around to press underneath himself. Logan inhaled sharply, watching the twist of Scott’s body as he opened himself up. From the wrenched look on his face, it wasn’t enough. Licking at his own fingertips, he followed Scott’s hand down. 

He nibbled at Scott’s collarbone. “C’mon, Slim, I know it’s gonna hurt unless you relax for me, for the first time in your fucking life.”

Scott’s head was thrown back, his face tight like a fist, making little bitten-off noises that drove Logan crazy. He wanted to hear Summers wailing, wanted to make enough noise to wake up every lonely guest of the motel, to get the spotty clerk in the sad little office banging at their door to tell them Sirs, can you keep it down, _please_. He wanted to be the one to make Scott lose control. 

Two fingers deep, and Logan couldn’t wait any longer. He lined up his dick and Scott, back bent against the wall, arms rigid on top of Logan’s shoulders, sank slowly down. 

“ _Oh_ ,” he moaned, still keeping his voice down.

“Tell me, Scott, tell me,”

Logan was panting, trying to keep in control, and Scott just had to rest his forehead against Logan’s temple and say right into his ear, “Fuck you, Howlett,”

Snarling, Logan thrust up, pushing deep into Scott’s core. He was so tight, hot and supple around Logan’s cock, and Scott took every thrust like a champ. Logan vaguely noticed the wallpaper beginning to buckle under his hands. 

They began to moan together, Logan’s voice hoarse, filling the air with every movement that pushed Logan deeper in, moved Scott further up the wall, made his pale skin flush pink, made Logan feel crazy with the burn. 

Scott wrapped a hand around his dick, roughly pulling at it, and Logan moved a hand off the wall to grasp his fist around Scott’s, the two of them moving together with the urgent rock of his hips. 

He could feel Scott come from inside him, his body clamping down as Scott’s eyes widened, the red _o_ of his mouth opening as he sighed out. Fingers clasped tightly to Logan’s shoulders as Scott struggled to stay upright. 

Warm come hit Logan’s stomach, and his hips began to stutter. That was all she wrote, and Logan curled forward to lean his head on the wall next to Scott’s head, feeling his muscles liquify as Scott ran is hands in long, soothing strokes down his back. 

 

Logan blinked awake. The morning light was dim and yellow, showing up the dust. Scott was up in a pair of tracksuit pants and pacing those long legs across the small room. 

Stretching out and scratching his stomach, Logan yawned. His voice came out croaky from the drinking and the heavy breathing the night before. “You’re pissed off that he didn’t come.”

Scott made an impatient snort, his bare back to Logan. “Why would I expect that?”

Logan waited. Scott continued, mashing a t-shirt into a duffle bag, “I guess I should be honored that he even sent a representative,”

“I’m no representative of anyone but myself. What’s between you and the old man -”

“There’s nothing _between_ us.”

The bedsprings groaned as Logan sat up. “Sure. You’re his lieutenant for ten years, head of every significant program there - save for Hank’s R&D crap - you repeat every pronouncement he makes like it’s the fucking gospel,”

“The hell I - ”

“Don’t bother, Slim, I was there too, I know Chuck was all you ever had in the father figure department and if he’d told you to stab your own eyeball you woulda asked ‘left or right, sir?’”

Scott looked over his shoulder towards him, nostrils flared, his eyes not quite meeting Logan’s but glaring at the wall. “Go fuck yourself.”

“Why would I, when I have your help?”

Shaking his head, Scott kept packing, making short work of his clothes and moving on to picking up the debris from last night. As he ducked down to grab a stray Subway napkin the lines of his back stretched out in the thin light, showing the reddened marks Logan had left behind. When he straightened up Logan stood behind him, clamping an arm around his waist. Scott stiffened, wary, and Logan kept his voice low. “He didn’t need me to find you. You’re not that hard to locate. And Professor Xavier has never had problems finding anyone in his life,”

“Mmm,” Scott had balled up his hands into fists, “like when he dug you out of that hole in Ottawa where you were drinking yourself to death.”

“That it, Slim? You trying to copy what I did, get Daddy to swoop in and rescue you? Because a few Jacks and Coke a night won’t even put a dent in it. You still go jogging, fer Chrissakes. You want to poison yourself, you gotta put in much harder work.”

Logan watched the back of Scott’s neck flush red with anger. He’d seen it happen before, times when he taunted Scott when he had him pinned down, or later on in the academy when they were meant to be role models, and Scott would walk away from him rather than be pulled into another fight. But there was always some telltale sign, like that pinking skin, to let Logan know he’d landed a blow.

From between gritted teeth, Scott said, “What does it matter what I want? Maybe I want to be left here alone, and I don’t even get that, I get you, rubbing it into my face all over again -”

“What, that Charles doesn’t think you’re special enough to rescue? As if making you his second in command wasn’t enough, as if building the entire academy system around your leadership wasn’t enough, you want to be the one he saves, just one time?”

Scott’s body pressed against the weight of Logan’s arm, just a little, just enough to let Logan know there was a new fight in the offing, if he wanted it. He loosened his hold and placed two hands on the smooth planes of Scott’s waist. 

“You know what would happen if Charles had shown up here? He’d ask you what you want. He’d offer you everything to come back, but he’d say it was only if you wanted to.”

He watched the tiny movements of Scott’s head on his neck, shifting from side to side as if the option of punching Logan out was literally rolling around between his ears. He kept talking, moving his mouth just behind the shell of Scott’s ear, “And you’d say of course you’d come back. Of course you want to. Maybe you’d throw in a small demand - a break on the endless ops he gets you to plan, a little less travel so that you’re not away from home more often than you’re there, a chance to shape the curriculum with some of your own ideas. You’ve got legitimate claims. You’ve never taken one sabbatical, have you? You practically never go on holiday. 

“And now here’s Charles, coming all the way to Everton - and he rarely travels these days, makes you do it for him - just to ask you to come back. Bet you imagined that over and over. You’d say yes sir, right away sir, and jump back on the grind. No job too big, no task too unpleasant, Summers is your man. Cleaning up after the world’s most powerful fuck-ups. What was the last one, Scott? Breaking into a North Korean prison camp? Or infiltrating the rebel group in that military coup down in Latin America last month?”

The muscles in Scott’s jaw flexed. He inhaled sharply, involuntarily, and seemed to swallow the air and struggle to keep it trapped in his chest. His voice was cold and quiet.

“Refugee camp a few miles from the Rudyardan border. We were meant to find the daughter of the former opposition party leader. Her name was Faizah. She was meant to help the Wakandan aid agency by leading them to the exiles hidden in the jungle.”

“And was she there?”

Scott breathed heavily again. “Not alive. She’d been killed before we got there. If we’d been five days earlier, we could have cut the armed forces off before they reached the camp…”

“That’s a sizable ‘if’ to be carrying around,”

Flinching, Scott looked back at Logan. “ _Negotiations_. We had to wait for that sonuvabitch Rudyardan General to approve our entrance to the camp. I was right there for two weeks, just a thirty minute drive to the camp, waiting to be told I could walk my people in without machine guns being fired at us.”

“What did Charles say?”

A little shrug lifted Scott’s shoulders as he breathed out in a half-laugh. “That we should consider re-examining our policy on similar procedurals. That I’d followed ‘best practices’. That it had been unfortunate.”

His voice almost broke on the last syllable, and Logan watched him swallow air, kept his hands steady on Scott’s waist. 

Scott exhaled a ragged breath. His body pressed up against the loose hold Logan had him in, but Logan didn’t think it was because he wanted to be let go. So Logan pulled him in tighter and tugged him back down to the bed. 

 

 

Billy’s Homestyle Restaurant was still open, serving up heart-attack specials to the citizens of Everton, though Logan pointed out there was something called a Superfood Salad on the menu. 

“Dare you to order it.”

Logan leaned forward. “Dare you to suck my dick in the bathroom.”

Scott gave him the finger and looked around for a server. Spotting one walking across the room towards him, he said loudly, “Think I’ll get the three-cheese omelette,”

Then he dropped his voice, “And I would have to see how clean it is in there first.”

Logan’s mouth opened at that, but before he could make a comeback the server was next to the table. Her nametag said Amelia and she looked about 16. Logan felt bad for even having dirty thoughts in her presence. 

“Actually, I think I’ll have the scrambled eggs, with hash browns, sausage, bacon, and pancakes, thank you.”

She repeated Scott’s order to him, looking pleased as punch. He was smiling at her, giving the full All-American routine, and Logan looked at him a little too long. Amelia asked him again, “And what would you like?” 

“Uh… the same. And coffee, lots of it.”

“Excellent, that’ll be right over.”

Scott looked buoyant and untouched by any kind of hangover. Whether it was the prospect of greasy carbs or the pre-breakfast orgasm, he was as relaxed as Logan had ever seen him. He could imagine what the women of Everton would make of Scott. He’d bet hard cash that Amelia was giggling over him with another server in the kitchen right now. 

“You gonna stay here?”

Scott looked like he was about to spit out the water he’d just sipped. “In _Everton_?”

Pursing his lips, Logan looked around the diner. “Worse places to be. Grass is green, property’s cheap. They’re probably hiring at the dog food cannery.”

Rolling his eyes, Scott lined up his cutlery on his placemat in exact angles. “I coulda had that if I stayed here. There’s a reason I signed up for the army on my eighteenth birthday, and it wasn’t just to meet exotic Canadians like you.”

“So why come back?” 

“This place,” Scott spread his hands wide on the table, “was where I began, kinda. I’d been to other foster homes, and before that there were my folks, my brother, of course. But in Everton I was by myself. Alex had taken off after juvie, and there wasn’t email or texting to keep in touch then. I got a postcard from him on my birthday, if I was lucky. 

“I was getting into a lot of trouble, wherever I could find it. I knew no one wanted me, so I gave them good reasons not to. But I ended up in Everton, with Rosalie, who told me on the first day that she had my number and it’d be better for both of us if we worked together.”

“She sounds like,” Logan stopped, not sure what to say. “Like a good woman.”

“She saved me. She took me seriously. And then it didn’t matter so much that I wasn’t on the track team or that the school nurse thought I was faking my migraines.”

Amelia arrived with their coffees, said their food would be just a minute, and gave Scott some extra smiles and eyelash fluttering. Once she was gone he leaned back in the booth. 

“It’s not that I feel her spirit or anything when I come back here, not really. But it’s like a reset button. I can remember staring at the highway thinking of all the places I could go.”

“And now? Where you gonna go, back to Westchester? Or join the Foreign Legion?”

Scott laughed, shook his head a little. Logan found it hard to imagine Scott without an organisation to serve. Whether it was the military, the government, or Charles and his ragtag group of mercs and freedom fighters, he always gravitated to be part of something bigger than him alone. 

“Being back here, I remembered, the other plan I made if I couldn’t hack it in the army. I wanted to be a high school gym teacher.”

“You hated high school.”

“Yeah,” Scott said dreamily, “I really goddamn did.”

“Watch the language there Summers, this is a family establishment.”

That was when Amelia arrived with their food. Scott dove in, eating more than Logan had ever seen him put away before. It was as if after satisfying one desire he could suddenly go buckwild on more. 

Logan drank his coffee and ate some bacon. He waited until Scott had slowed down a little on the eager chewing before asking him, “And what do you need to do that?”

Scott shrugged. “A degree in something, I’d guess. Qualifications. Clean bill of health. If they need security clearance, I still have that nice letter from the President about saving his life that one time.”

“This President, or the last one?” 

Thumbing the air behind him, Scott said, “Last one. One of the first missions after you left.”

He didn’t say, when you left _us_. Logan watched him go back to eating like a rabid racoon, the morning light hitting the side of his face. The servers would probably say that he was cute, even with the occasional grey hairs and that scar tissue around his ear. 

But then they never got to see him like Logan saw him. 

 

_San Jose, California_

Logan hadn’t been into Guillermo’s for a few days. He’d had a job in Palo Alto finding out whether a tech CEO’s brother-in-law was the one trying to sell a knock-off version of his proprietary software to East European hackers. Turns out it had been the brother-in-law’s mistress who’d been responsible. Logan’s recommendation to his client was that he put her on the payroll - “She’s too smart to have as an enemy, and she hates your sister’s husband just as much as you do.”

The guy had told Logan he was happy with his work, and compensated him well for his services. Walking into the bar, Logan peered over to where his usual seat was, his eyes getting used to the gloom after the bright sunshine outside. Jeff caught his look, tilted his head towards the guy sitting at Logan’s table.

“You want me to move him, Chief? He’s been hanging around since we opened. Was in yesterday, too.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. Can you bring me over a beer?”

Jeff nodded firmly, already popping the top from a bottle of Moosehead. 

As Logan walked over, he grabbed the back of a chair from an empty table and dragged it behind him, before flipping it around and sitting down on it to face Scott. 

Scott finally looked up from the thick textbook he’d been reading. Logan lifted the cover to read the title. 

“‘Key Stages of Human Development for Learning’? Sounds fascinating.”

“I’m on the chapter about all the ways we get screwed up in the head, by our parents, teachers, societal expectations, the full nine yards.” 

Logan scoffed. “You worked out what went wrong with you yet?”

“Think it might’ve been meeting you.”

Jeff brought over Logan’s beer, and Logan ordered another one for Scott. As the bartender moved away, Logan took a swig and asked, “So what the hell are you doing here?”

“Lots of good schools in California, it turns out.”

“Sure are. Can be expensive to live here if you’re not backed by venture capitalists, though.”

“Luckily, I have - thanks man,” Scott took his beer from Jeff, who narrowed his eyes and looked at Logan, who waved him off to say, _this is fine, I won’t be getting in a knife fight today._

Scott sipped his beer. “I’m being funded by a rich bastard with a lot of secrets and a passion for education.”

“Having a guy like that on your side could be very useful.”

“You might know him, he says hi. Asked me to tell you that if you ever want to come back and work for him, he’s got an open leadership position.”

“Hmm,” Logan drank his beer, “Great offer. I think he can fuck all the way off.”

Scott laughed. “So business is good?”

“Not bad. Sometimes I have too much. Need a spare pair of eyes I can rely on, someone who has my back.”

Reclining back in Logan’s chair, Scott looked like he was at home already. “It’s recommended that we take regular study breaks.”

He lifted his beer towards Logan, who held off from toasting it. “This doesn’t mean I like you.”

“That’s good, Howlett. Because I can’t stand you either.”


End file.
